Canada is preparing to unveil a new three-year immigration plan that will determine how many permanent residents, international students and temporary foreign workers the country intends to admit between 2027 and 2029, at a time when the federal government is weighing how quickly immigration can grow again after a period of tighter controls.
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The 2027–2029 Immigration Levels Plan is expected in early November and will introduce Canada’s first official immigration target for 2029 while either confirming or revising the figures already pencilled in for 2027 and 2028.
For prospective immigrants, students and workers hoping to move to Canada, the plan will be closely watched because the headline totals tell only part of the story. The number of spaces assigned to individual programmes — from economic immigration and provincial nominations to family reunification, international students and temporary workers — will determine where opportunities actually exist.
Under Canada’s current 2026–2028 Immigration Levels Plan, the government set permanent resident admissions at 380,000 annually for 2026, 2027 and 2028. It also set targets for new temporary resident arrivals at 385,000 in 2026 and 370,000 in each of 2027 and 2028.
The temporary-resident numbers cover new arrivals under the international student and temporary worker programmes rather than every temporary resident already living in Canada.
For 2027, the current plan provides for 150,000 new international student arrivals and 220,000 temporary workers, making up the overall temporary-resident arrival target of 370,000. The same figures currently apply to 2028.
Those numbers are now subject to the government’s next annual review.
Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada has already confirmed that work is underway on the 2027–2029 plan and has held consultations with provinces, territories and other stakeholders over labour shortages, regional needs, economic immigration and the role of Provincial Nominee Programmes.
The timetable is governed by Canadian law.
Section 94(1) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act requires the immigration minister to table the annual immigration report in each House of Parliament on or before November 1. If Parliament is not sitting on that date, the report must be tabled within the next 30 sitting days.
This year, November 1 falls on a Sunday. The House of Commons calendar shows Parliament scheduled to sit from Monday, November 2, making the opening days of November the likely window for the new plan.
The coming announcement will land at an interesting point in Canada’s immigration debate.
Prime Minister Mark Carney said in a recent New York Times interview that, with the government believing immigration numbers had been brought under better control, attention was beginning to turn to when Canada could resume what he called a “controlled increase” in population.
“Now the question starts to become, when do we resume some controlled increase in the population, which is the nature of Canada?” Carney said.
“So that will happen, and we just want to make sure that we’ve got it under control.”
The comment has fuelled expectations that the government could eventually allow immigration numbers to rise again, but Ottawa has not announced the 2027–2029 targets, and Carney’s remarks do not by themselves establish that the forthcoming plan will raise any particular category.
The current policy remains focused on reducing the pressure created by rapid population growth while directing immigration more heavily towards economic and labour-market needs.
Canada’s existing plan aims to reduce temporary residents to less than five per cent of the population by the end of 2027 and keep permanent resident admissions below one per cent of the population beyond 2027.
The government has argued that the recalibration is intended to better align immigration with the country’s housing supply, healthcare system, infrastructure and labour market.
At the same time, Ottawa continues to place economic immigration at the centre of the permanent-residence system.
Under the current plan, economic immigration is expected to account for about 64 per cent of permanent resident admissions in 2027 and 2028, the largest share among the major immigration categories.
That makes the breakdown of the new 2027–2029 figures particularly important for skilled workers.
The federal economic category covers pathways including high-skilled immigration, while provinces and territories also select immigrants through Provincial Nominee Programmes according to local labour and demographic needs.
The forthcoming plan is therefore expected to clarify how many permanent-residence spaces will be assigned across economic immigration, provincial nominations, family reunification, refugees and protected persons, humanitarian programmes and other categories.
For people seeking permanent residence through programmes connected to Express Entry, the overall economic allocation can influence how much room the government has to issue invitations and process admissions, although an annual levels plan does not itself guarantee that any particular applicant will receive an invitation or permanent residence.
International students will also be watching closely.
Canada has sharply reduced planned new student arrivals as part of its effort to bring down the temporary-resident population.
The current target is 155,000 new student arrivals in 2026, falling to 150,000 in 2027 and remaining at that level in 2028.
Temporary foreign workers face similar uncertainty.
The current plan provides for 220,000 new temporary-worker arrivals in both 2027 and 2028. Of that figure, 170,000 are allocated under the International Mobility Program and 50,000 through the Temporary Foreign Worker Program.
Whether those numbers remain unchanged, fall further or begin to rise will be one of the central questions answered by the new plan.
Francophone immigration outside Quebec will be another area to watch.
The government has set a broader objective of having French-speaking immigrants account for 12 per cent of permanent resident admissions outside Quebec by 2029. The existing plan sets interim targets of nine per cent in 2026, 9.5 per cent in 2027 and 10.5 per cent in 2028.
That means the 2027–2029 plan should show how Ottawa intends to reach the 12 per cent goal in the final year.
The government has been consulting Canadians on the new plan since May, asking for views on the appropriate level and composition of immigration while balancing labour-market requirements with housing, public services and community capacity. Those consultations closed on June 30.
For anyone planning to study, work or settle permanently in Canada, the November announcement will therefore be about more than one headline immigration number.
It will show which categories Ottawa intends to prioritise, how many spaces will be available for temporary and permanent newcomers, whether the reductions of recent years will continue, and how the government intends to reconcile its commitment to lower temporary-resident numbers with Carney’s suggestion that a controlled expansion could eventually return.
Until the plan is formally tabled, however, the existing targets remain the reference point: 380,000 permanent residents annually through 2028 and 370,000 new temporary-resident arrivals in both 2027 and 2028.
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